MTN Group said on Wednesday that the process with potential strategic investors for its FinTech business had been initiated, the outcome of which is anticipated to be concluded by the end of December 2022. In March, MTN announced plans to spin off its FinTech Business. For more read: MTN Set To Spin Off Fibre, FinTech Businesses, Invite Third Party Investors
“The work to structurally separate the fintech business from the GSM business within the operations progressed well, and the implementation of inter-company agreements and necessary regulatory approvals are tracking in line with expectations,” Ralph Mupita, MTN Group CEO, informed investors on Thursday.
“We are engaging, on a selective basis, potential strategic investors for the MTN Group Fintech in line with our plans.”
MTN Group also announced that the growth in the FinTech ecosystem continues to be solid, with the growth in the number of active mobile money (MoMo) users of 24% year-on-year to 60.7 million, agents up by 26.9% to 1.1 million and merchants increasing 62.7% to a total of 946 249 across the markets.
The volume of transactions processed through MTN’s FinTech platform grew by 31.5% year-on-year to 6 billion, with the value of transactions up by 1% to $116.3 billion or R1.9 trillion, impacted by currency devaluation in our markets (up 11.7% in constant currency).
In Nigeria, MTN added 37 109 MoMo agents to end the period with more than 800 000 registered agents, approximately 166 000 of whom were active (performed a minimum of 10 revenue-generating transactions in a 30-day period).
Having successfully scaled the base of registered agents, the focus of MTN Nigeria is now to increase the number of active agents and merchants within the network.
The MoMo PSB commenced commercial operations on 19 May 2022, with the primary focus on accelerating the MoMo wallet uptake.
“We are pleased with the progress so far, where we have a total of 4.2 million wallets signed up, of which 2.4 million were active users in the six weeks from launch to the end of H1 2022,” said MTN.
MoMo PSB is focused on both the conversion of existing over-the-counter (OTC) platform users to own a wallet, as well as expanding services to new users of FinTech offerings.
“We have made material progress in expanding our payments and e-commerce ecosystem. The number of active merchants accepting MoMo payments stood at 946 249 (up 62.7% YoY) and the total value of MoMo merchant payments (gross merchandise value – GMV) rose by 67.8% to US$7.9 billion (up 88.5% in constant currency).
“We remain focused on entrenching the momentum and growth in our payments and e-commerce vertical through evolution of our merchant product to e-commerce. The total value of remittances grew by 2% to $1.1 billion (up 4.5% in constant currency) at 30 June 2022; while, in BankTech, we facilitated a total loan value of $560.3 million, reflecting growth of 9.5% YoY (up 35.9% in constant currency).”
